Recent proposals pose key threat to net neutrality

We should approach such proposals (to narrow web links) with extreme wariness.

Canada has rarely seen the type of explicit public debate about net neutrality regularly experienced south of the border (and most recently as Donald Trump’s administration has decided to undermine it at the federal level).

But that doesn’t mean Canadians don’t face significant risks to the promise of connecting to the world as we see fit. And two recent challenges show the type of risks to an open internet which lie ahead.

Last December, a report first emerged through Canadaland about a forthcoming campaign to bar access to websites seen as contributing to the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted content online. And this year, a major lobbying effort has come to fruition.

The FairPlay campaign — pushed largely by Bell, but supported by a range of businesses and other organizations — has rolled out an application asking the CRTC to create a new “Internet Piracy Review Agency,” with a mandate to create a list of blacklisted websites which could be used to distribute copyrighted materials. Once a website was included on that list, Canadian internet service providers would be required to bar access to it.

The slant of the FairPlay proposal toward the draconian enforcement of intellectual property rights is readily seen in how its proposal is framed — including the naming of the agency to focus on the loaded term “piracy,” as well as a highly biased list of factors to be considered in determining whether to bar access to a particular website.

But even more pernicious is its idea of funding the agency through application fees. Based on that structure, anybody employed by the agency would have an institutional incentive to favour copyright holders over all other interests — as decisions in favour of open access which resulted in less applications being pursued would lead in turn to a loss of funding.

Fortunately, the CRTC’s response so far has been to implicitly challenge the premise of the proposal by emphasizing its historical focus on neutrality and accessibility. But the prospect of a big-money campaign to allow media conglomerates to restrict how Canadians are able to share information still calls for a response from policy-makers and the public.

Meanwhile, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has raised another proposal to interfere in the availability of information online on the basis of a “right to be forgotten.”

Daniel Therrien has suggested expanding on the European Union’s framework which allows for users to apply to challenge the accuracy or appropriateness of information about themselves online.

The EU’s system allows for a user to apply to a search engine to de-index particular results. But Therrien’s proposal could be far more intrusive: It potentially includes greater editorializing by search engines in the form of down-ranking and flagging particular content, as well as the mandatory removal of content at its source.

It bears mentioning that both copyright interests and privacy interests are already protected by law and enforceable through the courts — both through monetary damages as a starting point, and through orders which restrict access in cases where those are justified as well. The proposals to further facilitate access restrictions then reflect a goal of making it more convenient to limit the flow of information as a first step — while concurrently shifting the balance against a neutral and open internet.

If anything, we should already be concerned about the concentration of online activity through a small number of services (in both content creation and distribution). And whether a plan to further narrow our informational connections to the world is rooted in a drive for profit or less selfish motives, we should approach such proposals with extreme wariness.